Psychedelic drugs should be legally reclassified so that researchers can investigate their therapeutic potential

“… in 1992 John Ehrlichman, former assistant to Richard Nixon—the US president who intensified the ‘war on drugs’ in the 1970s—notoriously admitted that the administration had lied about the harmful effects of drugs and had manipulated media coverage of them for political advantage. Nearly 50 years later psychedelic drugs remain more legally restricted than heroin and cocaine …”

This article – Psychedelic drugs should be legally reclassified so that researchers can investigate their therapeutic potential – appeared in the British Medical Journal (May 2015). It was written by Dr. James Rucker (specialist registrar in adult psychiatry).

The article summary says:

“Trials of physiologically safe and non-addictive drugs such as LSD are almost impossible, writes James J H Rucker, calling on the authorities to downgrade their unnecessarily restrictive class A, schedule 1 classification.”

The article begins:

“Psychedelic drugs, especially lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin, which is found in the Psilocybe genus of ‘magic’ mushrooms that grow throughout the United Kingdom, were extensively used and researched in clinical psychiatry before their prohibition in 1967. Hundreds of papers, involving tens of thousands of patients, presented evidence for their use as psychotherapeutic catalysts of mentally beneficial change in many psychiatric disorders, problems of personality development, recidivistic behaviour, and existential anxiety.

This research abruptly ended after 1967, when psychedelics were legally classified as schedule 1 drugs under the UK Misuse of Drugs Regulations and as class A drugs under the UK Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Schedule 1 in the UK broadly mirrors schedule I of the 1971 United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances, adoption of which is a requirement of UN membership. This classification denoted psychedelic drugs as having no accepted medical use and the greatest potential for harm, despite the existence of research evidence to the contrary …”

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